The Hill of the Red Fox

by Allan Campbell McLean

  I moved the chair away from the window and sat down once more on the bed, determined to plan a way of escape. Somehow or other, I had to get out of Achmore Lodge and rejoin Duncan Mòr. But whichever way my thoughts turned, and no matter how I schemed, I always came up short against the problem of the locked door and the barred window.

  It was almost one o’clock when I heard footsteps approaching along the uncarpeted passage. I shrank back against the wall, watching the door fearfully. The lock must have been well oiled because I never heard the key turn. The door opened and Slater came in with a tray. I wondered how I could have laughed at his likeness to Humpty-Dumpty. I could see nothing funny about him now. His eyes were small and cold and there was a hard, vicious line to his mouth.

  He put down the tray carefully on the table, and said, “The Major thinks it would be advisable for you to rest, so I trust you have no objection to taking lunch in your room.”

  He spoke in the same deferential manner as before, and backed out of the room and closed the door behind him. After a moment, I heard footsteps retreating down the passage. I realized that my legs were shaking and I sat down unsteadily on the bed. They were playing with me, like a cat toying with a mouse, and it was more frightening than the direct violence I had anticipated.

  After a while, I went over to the table and tried to eat. My mouth was dry and I had difficulty in swallowing. The appearance of Slater had strained my nerves to breaking point, crumbling my resolution and inducing a state of near panic. I fought down my swiftly rising fears and thought desperately.

  If I were to take all my meals in the room, then at least the door was not locked all the time. In the brief moment it was open, lay my only chance of escape. Slater was almost bound to leave the key in the lock when he came into the room and I could easily dodge past him. I could slam the door and lock him in whilst he still had the tray in his hands. It was doubtful if his cries would be heard because the room was on the second floor and at the back of the house. Even if I gained the passage there still remained many hazards to overcome before I reached the safety of the moor, but at least it was better than passively awaiting my fate.

  I determined to make my bid for freedom when he returned for the tray, but it was five o’clock before I heard the sound of footsteps in the passage again.

  I sat at the foot of the bed close to the door, my muscles tensed for action. Slater opened the door and moved into the room and I glanced swiftly over his shoulder, ready to take to my heels the moment he was past me. My heart sank. A tall, broad-shouldered man was standing outside the door, blocking my escape route. I realized dismally that he had probably accompanied Slater at lunch-time, but I had been too panic-stricken then to take my eyes off the manservant’s face.

  Slater set down the tea tray and gathered up the lunch tray.

  “Dinner will be served at seven, sir,” he said smoothly.

  With an ironical bow, he made his way out of the room and the door closed behind him. I heard the faint click of the lock and there was a terrible finality in the sound. It marked the shattering of all my hopes.

  I ate a tiny salmon sandwich and a cake and drank a cup of tea. There was nothing to do but wait, and I stood at the window looking down into the courtyard. The wind was rising steadily. I could hear it soughing round the house, and an oil drum outside the garage suddenly overturned and went careering across the courtyard. It crashed against the wall and the cap burst off and a thin stream of oil stained the ground.

  Then the rain came. It came in a sudden deluge and in a matter of minutes pools had gathered across the paved floor of the courtyard. I could hear the water pouring down the pipes outside the window, and beating against the asbestos roof of the garage.

  The noise of the wind and rain drowned the approach of the black saloon. It swept silently into the courtyard, swung round in a wide sweep, and the driver reversed into the garage I think it was Blue Eyes who climbed out of the driving seat and four men clambered out of the back. They dashed across to the house, leaving the garage doors wide open. The doors were hooked back to the walls of the garage, or they would have been torn off with the force of the wind.

  Punctually at seven o’clock I heard the familiar footsteps in the passage and Slater came into the room with the dinner tray. The broad-shouldered guard leaned against the door jamb, and Slater picked up the other tray and left the room without a word.

  I had no stomach for the food and I made no attempt to eat it. I wondered if the other man stayed on guard in the passage and I tiptoed to the door and peered through the key-hole. I could not understand why I could see nothing, and it was only when I drew back from the door that I noticed the bright metal tip of the key. It had been left in the lock.

  If there was no guard in the passage, and if only I could manage to extract the key, my way of escape was clear. My spirits soared, only to drop again as quickly. The solid expanse of the door lay between me and the key and I did not possess even a knife to try to poke it out of the keyhole.

  I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes in a mood of hopeless resignation. If only I could go to sleep and wake up and find it had all been a bad dream. I rolled over on my side and pillowed my head in my arm. Something hard prodded me in the ribs and I sat up and felt the bed. There was nothing there. Then I remembered the rabbit snare in my pocket. I pulled it out and toyed with it, idly pushing the wooden peg through the wire noose of the snare.

  It must have been fully five minutes before the idea struck me, but once it came I wasted no time. I leapt off the bed and ran to the door. I could hardly control my trembling fingers as I pulled the brass eyelet of the snare run to its fullest extent so that the wire was doubled. Then I gripped the wire between the thumb and forefinger of both hands and twisted it into a single thin rod about two inches long.

  My heart was hammering madly as I bent over the lock and inserted the wire in the keyhole. I gave it a gentle, exploratory push and felt the key move back. I took out the wire and peered into the keyhole. The key had been pushed back a full quarter of an inch.

  I got down on my knees and examined the base of the door. The floor of the bedroom was of bare polished wood and there was a narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. It was sufficiently wide to enable the laying of a floor covering, and wide enough, I prayed, to permit the passage of the key.

  I doubled the snare wire a second time, making four thicknesses of wire, and thrust it under the door. It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to pass it backwards and forwards under the door, and I was sure that the thicknesses of wire were fatter than the key.

  There was now nothing to stop me poking the key out of the lock, and if I could hook it under the door I had only to unlock the door and step out into the passage. The temptation to get to work at once was almost too great to overcome, but I steeled myself to walk back to the bed.

  It was too early in the evening to attempt an escape. Supposing Slater returned for the dinner tray and I met him and the guard in the passage? Supposing a man was always on guard in the passage? The latter was a risk that had to be taken, but it would be safer to wait and see if Slater returned for the key before attempting a break-out. I decided to give him until eleven o’clock before making a move, and I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.

  Sleep was out of the question, but at least with my eyes closed I could not see the door and be tempted to make an immediate move. The wind was approaching gale force and I heard the slates rattling as successive gusts made furious onslaughts on the house, and behind all the noise of the wind was the steady gurgle and flow of running water as it flooded off the roof into the drain-pipes.

  I tried counting up to a thousand, and repeating all the history dates I knew from the Battle of Hastings onwards, and saying the alphabet backwards, and going through the multiplication tables, and saying to myself, when I look at my watch it will be ten o’clock; when I look at it again it will be a quarter past ten; but no matter what I did I could not spe
ed the passing hours. From the time I discovered the rabbit snare in my pocket, I seemed to have lived another life, much longer than the one I had known up to then.

  At eleven o’clock there was still no sign of Slater, but I had a sudden foreboding that he must be on his way up to the room. I waited until half past eleven, when the room was in almost complete darkness, before I tiptoed to the door.

  I inserted my wire rod into the keyhole and started to work the key out of the lock. Then I had a sudden inspiration and I blundered across to the table and felt for a book. In my haste I upset the pile of books which Slater had balanced on the edge of the table to make way for the tray, and two heavy volumes crashed to the floor before I could catch them. The noise was such that I thought everyone in the house must hear it.

  I stood stock-still, in an agony of apprehension, but nothing happened. Surely if there had been a guard in the passage he would have looked in to see the cause of the noise. I listened intently, but there was only the howling of the wind and the incessant drumming of the rain to be heard. Slowly my confidence returned, and I realized that the noise of the storm must have covered the crash of the falling books, which had probably been magnified by my over-sensitive ears. My groping hands closed around a book and I opened it and ripped out a page.

  I slipped the paper under the door directly beneath the keyhole and took hold of the snare again. I inserted the wire into the keyhole and pushed the key out of the lock and it fell to the floor with a dull tinkle. In a frenzy of excitement, I dropped to my knees and took hold of the corners of the paper. I eased the paper gently towards me, then felt around the bottom of the door for the key. One end of the key was protruding slightly under the door and I pulled sharply at the paper. It came away into the room, leaving the key wedged under the door.

  I tried to force my fingers under the door, in an attempt to scrape the key into the room, and I broke a nail in my frantic scrabbling before I had the sense to return to the snare. I bent the wire into an arc and pushed it under the door and hooked the key into the room. I seized it with trembling hands and for a moment I wondered if I had bent it, for I could not get it to go into the keyhole. At the third attempt, however, it went in and I unlocked the door.

  Now that the time had come, I felt strangely reluctant to leave the room. All sorts of fears and doubts assailed me. What if a guard lurked in the darkness of the passage after all, and was waiting for me to run into his arms? How could I hope to steal out of the house without being seen? Would they shoot me down in cold blood if they saw me trying to escape? I gritted my teeth. If Duncan Mòr were in my shoes he would have been at the head of the stairs by now.

  Hardly daring to breathe, I grasped the handle and opened the door.

  Chapter 21

  No sound or movement came from the darkness of the passage, so I took to my heels and ran. I might well have bolted straight into the arms of a waiting guard, and I was half-way down the passage before I realized how foolish I had been. I stopped short, listening anxiously. The only sound came from my own rapidly beating heart. I moved on again, this time stepping cautiously on tiptoe.

  When I reached the head of the stairs I remembered that I had left the door open, but I was afraid to turn back. It was as much as I could do to move forward. The stairs were thickly carpeted and I would be unable to hear anyone mounting them until they were almost face to face with me. I could imagine Slater, at this very moment, silently crossing the hall and slowly ascending the stairs. My legs started to tremble, and I shut the picture from my mind. Summoning all my resolution, I moved swiftly down the stairs.

  I did not encounter anyone. The hall lay straight ahead, dimly illuminated by the light of a hanging lantern, and I was about to race across it when I saw a passage branching off to the right. A chink of light showed under a door half-way down the passage. I hesitated for a moment, torn between the desire to make good my escape and an urge to find out as much as possible before leaving the Lodge. All my instincts urged me to carry on out of the house, but some stubborn streak of foolhardy courage, that I did not know I possessed, prompted me to tiptoe down the passage. I stood outside the door ready to flee at the first sound of movement from inside the room.

  I could hear Major Cassell’s voice and I bent down and peered through the keyhole. The Major’s desk was directly opposite the door, and Dr Reuter was sitting in a swivel chair behind the desk. Major Cassell was bending over him, his face close to the scientist’s. Dr Reuter was deathly white and he shifted uneasily in the chair. He looked badly frightened. When I saw Major Cassell’s face I knew the reason why.

  The Major was dressed in the same loose-fitting tweed suit he had worn that morning and his face was as pink and shining as ever. But it was not the same face. The easy smile had left his lips and his mouth was set in a thin, hard line. There was nothing jolly or hearty about him, and when he spoke his voice rasped with anger.

  “Whether you like it or not, Reuter,” he said coldly, “you leave Skye tomorrow at midnight.”

  Dr Reuter leaned forward and his flabby hands gripped the carved wooden arms of the chair.

  “I don’t like it, Cassell,” he said nervously. “Broadcast announcements every two hours on the radio. Every busybody in the country on the alert. A nation-wide hunt. How long do you think it will be before they trace me to Skye?”

  He spoke in short, jerky sentences, and puffed continually at a cigarette.

  “In the unlikely event of them tracing you, it will be too late,” said the Major smoothly. “You will have vanished. They are still searching for Hunt, and you know where he is now.”

  “I don’t like it,” repeated Dr Reuter. “Ransome got away with no trouble, but Hunt was nearly tracked down. What about the man who was on his heels?”

  “Dead men tell no tales,” smiled the Major, and then, in a harsher tone, “I have taken steps to ensure that nothing will interfere with your escape. You were to have left at midnight on Saturday, but I have radioed Commander Gregoriev bringing forward the date twenty-four hours. The submarine will surface in the Sound at midnight tomorrow.”

  “I still don’t like it,” said the scientist stubbornly. “It is not too late to change our plans. If I were to turn up in Portree tomorrow my absence could be explained away as a misunderstanding. I could tell them I had decided to take a brief holiday in Skye. Say I was feeling the strain of overwork. A nervous breakdown, if you like. I had left Marwell hurriedly without leaving word. Nothing could be proved. Can’t you see how it would look? All this hue and cry, and for what? A mare’s nest. The authorities would look ridiculous. Later on, when things had quietened down, it would be easier for you to arrange for me to join Ransome and Hunt.”

  Major Cassell listened to him in silence, studying his neatly groomed nails, a half-amused smile on his lips.

  When the scientist had finished he said softly, “My dear Ernst, I really must remind you of the penalty for high treason.” He sighed, but the mocking smile remained on his lips. “The penalty, my friend, is death.”

  He turned round and for one panic-stricken moment I thought he was about to walk to the door, but he crossed the room, passing out of my narrow circle of vision.

  I heard him say, “I’m very fond of this painting, Ernst. Duntulm Castle, the home of the MacDonalds of the Isles. The dungeons of the castle were never empty, I’m told. Many a dark secret would be revealed if those walls could speak, and it amuses me, Ernst, to think that this painting hides a secret. See how easily it swings back.”

  Dr Reuter laughed nervously. “But of course,” he said, “I might have known. There is a wall safe behind it.”

  “Exactly,” said Major Cassell. “And in the safe is — this.”

  He came back into my line of vision and I saw him put down a small metal deed box on the desk. He tapped it with his forefinger.

  “There is enough evidence in this little box to hang you,” he went on in the same menacing tone. “It is all here.” Again his forefinge
r tapped the lid of the deed box. “All the secrets of our organization. How you persuaded Ransome and Hunt to join us. And are you forgetting your wife? We found her in one of Hitler’s concentration camps when you thought she was dead. We have looked after her well for you all these years. But she is in Moscow, remember, and it might be unpleasant for her if you were foolish enough not to join her there.” He pushed the box aside. “No, no, my friend, you had better think again.”

  Dr Reuter shifted uneasily and the chair creaked.

  “But what about the boy?” he demanded. “He has got to be … to be …”

  Major Cassell laughed. It was a laugh that made my flesh creep.

  “Don’t be squeamish, Reuter,” he said lightly. “We all know that the boy has got to be silenced.”

  He lit a cigarette and glanced at his watch. Taking a long, pleasurable pull, he removed the cigarette from his mouth and rolled it slowly between his thumb and forefinger.

  “By the time I have finished this cigarette,” he went on, “Master Alasdair Cameron will have ceased to bother anyone.”

  I did not stop to hear any more. I crept away from the door and fled across the hall. When I reached the outer door, I flung it open and ran out into the darkness of the night.

  The wind buffeted me as I stumbled down the steps to the drive and the rain lashed my face, but I was barely conscious of the fury of the storm. The Major’s words were still ringing in my ears as I raced down the drive to the iron gates of the Lodge.

  I wasted a full minute struggling to open the gates before I realized that they were locked. As I started to climb them the headlights of a car flashed on, cutting through the darkness and bathing every leaf and flower of the ornamental iron-work in brilliant light. I had one foot on top of the gates, and I glanced back as I drew the other foot up. The light dazzled me and in reaching forward to balance myself, I slipped and crashed down heavily on the road.